Actor wears 10 hats in play about gentrification in Williamsburg

A critically acclaimed play about gentrification in Williamsburg will soon be playing in - of all places - Williamsburg.

Danny Hoch - actor, playwright, Williamsburg resident and founder of the Hip-Hop Theater Festival - is giving a free performance of his one-man show, "Taking Over," in his own backyard - and at other spots around the city.

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Hoch will give free performances in Queens and the Bronx, before the show's Nov. 7 opening at the Public Theater in Manhattan.

"To have the show be successful in the Public Theater, I know I have to get the support of people in the boroughs first," said Hoch, 37. "Tourists won't be my bread and butter, but [it's the] New Yorkers, who feel their stories are being told on stage."

In "Taking Over," Hoch portrays 10 characters - everybody from a greedy landlord to a long-time female resident who parks herself on the stoop.

"The woman on the stoop feels alienated and disrespected," Hoch said. "The real estate developer gives his politically incorrect views of the people he's kicking out."

But the characters Hoch created and portrays are multi-dimensional.

"When really uncomfortable truths start coming out of the real estate developer's mouth, you start to identify with him," Hoch said. "And the woman on the stoop loves the almond croissants at the new hipster cafe. She can't get enough of them.

"We all look at ourselves as one- or two-dimensional people, but we're really five- or six-. I find the more I layer the characters with contradictions, the funnier they become. There's lots of hysterical laughter in 'Taking Over,' but some moments are serious, heart-stopping."

When "Taking Over" opened at the Berkeley Repertory Theater in January, critic Robert Hurwitt of the San Francisco Chronicle described the piece as "a stunning and provocatively complex portrait of a community in transition."

Hoch said while his work is set in the neighborhood where he's lived since 1990, "Taking Over" reflects what's going on in many other places, including DUMBO, Fort Greene, Chicago, Oakland and San Francis. His beef is with rapid, rather than gradual gentrification.

"I have one character in the show who took a cue from a developer, who will remain nameless, and gave all the high-end store owners in a 10-block-square area free rent for 10 years.

"The baker came in; the organic muffin man came in; the fusion restaurant came in." People Hoch calls "resident tourists" followed. "It was a brilliant capitalistic move.

"Even if people were smoking crack on the stoop or getting shot, as long as there was a place selling organic food, they felt comfortable," Hoch said. "And before long, the people who gentrified the neighborhood were complaining all the grit was gone, like you had to have shootings to live in an authentic place."